How to draw COUNTERPOINT

South African CZT Milde Weiss is sharing her awesome Counterpoint tangle with us today. This is her fourth tangle on the site, this summer she shared her popular Bysomnus with us.

Milde recently moved from Stellenbosch to the seaside town of Hartenbos in the Southern Cape of South Africa. She writes,

“It all started with an ‘Ouch!’.

When moving into a new house recently, we were lucky to find an established rose garden. Picking bunches of these beautiful flowers every few days invariably led to a few pricked fingers. After the umpteenth time, I thought: These thorns sure want my attention! I stopped and took time to really look at the thorns – and of course, I found a pattern.

I played around to create a ribbon tangle. Getting into the rhythm of the alternating curves reminded me of soothing music, so I came up with the name ‘counterpoint’.

The first row (Step 2) is easy – regular curves within one side of the ‘ribbon frame’.

The points of the second row, on the other side of the ribbon (Step 3), must line up with the top of the curves of the previous row. This can be a little confusing at first. To make this easier, make small dots where the second row’s points should be.

Filling in the points pattern with lines can either be done by turning the tile for the second row, or by having the stripes all go in the same direction, as in the variation. The negative spaces can be enhanced as well.“

Counterpoint has a lovely Paradox-y-twisty look to it, enhanced of course with a touch of graphite shading. For my example I combined a couple of ideas from Milde’s variations.

Milde illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Counterpoint below and features it in a tile with a very cool string shape containing the Zentangle-original ‘Nzeppel.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, reproduced or republished. Thank you for respecting these rights. For more information, click on the image for a discussion entitled “Artists for Respect” by several prominent artists.

In this tile Milde demonstrates some interesting Counterpoint variations. This is a cool idea for a way to use ribbon-style tangles like this one.

As you enjoy any of the tangles on the site, please leave a comment of thanks and encouragement to show the artists you appreciate them for sharing their creativity to inspire yours.

Check out the tag milde_w for more of Milde’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

Related Links

Linda's List of Zentangle-Original Patterns — here is the complete list of original tangles (aka "official tangles") created and introduced by founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas, including those not published online. If you are new to the Zentangle Method I highly recommend learning a few of the published Zentangle classics first.

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Milde I really like your Counterpoint. I felt a little intimidated looking at it but it draws up very nicely. I really like your variations. Each one is very appealing to look at. Thank you for sharing Counterpoint with us! Nancy

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